Content area
Full text
Introduction
Transformational leadership can be described as a style of leadership that promotes the collective interest of employees, helping them to reach collective goals (García-Morales et al., 2012). Moreover, transformational leaders inspire their followers, enhancing employees’ knowledge and learning to encourage them to be innovative with problem-solving tools (García-Morales et al., 2012). Transformational leaders possess charisma, provide intellectual stimulation and inspire their employees, enhance communication, trust and the sharing of knowledge (Senge, 1990; Bass and Avolio, 2000). These leaders are key to stimulating a climate that encourages organizational learning (Narver and Slater, 1990).
That is why this leadership style is expected to promote higher performance than other leadership styles, such as the transactional or laissez-faire methods (Bass and Avolio, 2000). Although evidence demonstrates that transformational managers have influence over performance, the processes through which this occurs are of special interest (García-Morales, Lloréns-Montes and Verdú-Jover, 2008; García‐Morales, Matías‐Reche and Hurtado‐Torres, 2008). In this sense, although several studies have analyzed the influence of transformational leadership on performance through other variables, such as culture or competitive strategies (Menguc et al., 2007), the existence of these kinds of analyses is still limited. In fact, authors such as García-Morales, Lloréns-Montes and Verdú-Jover (2008), García‐Morales, Matías‐Reche and Hurtado‐Torres (2008) or García-Morales et al. (2012) advocated that research could investigate other concepts that mediate in the relationship between transformational leadership and performance.
However, this relationship between transformational leadership and organizational performance is even more important in current environments, where companies must be innovative in order to achieve competitive advantages that enable them to increase their results (Aragón-Correa et al., 2007; Donate and Sánchez de Pablo, 2015). In this case, managers must be able to motivate their employees to become involved in innovation processes, acquiring new knowledge that allows companies to launch new products into the market (Andriopoulos and Lewis, 2010). In this regard, transformational leadership and human resource practices have been considered by recent literature as triggers for improving learning competences and innovation (Afacan Fındıklı et al., 2015). Besides, Gumusluoglu and Ilsev (2009) affirmed that the processes that mediate in the relationship between transformational leadership and innovation should be examined. As well, Heffernan et al. (2016) pointed out that there is a need for research concerning...